• • I Ion ea ac es

ear By HENRY F. and KATHARINE PRINGLE

Here are some of the nutty problems the telephone­directory people face : Shall tliey co-operate with Zeke ("Call me up, Toots-last name in the book") Zzzpt? Is Aaaaaron a real name? And how do you spell WolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorfT?

T 60,000,000 telephone directories which

are distributed about. once a year lo the farms, villages and cit.ies of t.his broad and talkative land are accepted 8S rout.ine neces­

sities. the bUlly men and women who compile, edit and produce them have innumerable minor and lIl8jor troubles, not necessarily routine ones.

Among their leaser troubles once were TaU! at. 80me of the printing plants, with voradoWi appetites for the glue wbich holds the volumes together. Tbe telephone-book people solved that. one simply, by devising an adhesive which is distasteful to the larger rodents: M ice, for some l"'C!allOn, didn't. seem to fancy eit.ber the glue or the paper.

More troublesome problema are posed by the as­tonishing numberof telephoneaub8cr ibers who yearn to be Listed eitber first or last in their home-town books snd who will go to considerable lengths to achieve their dubious purpoee. In the absence of any bard·and-fast national aJphabetical policy, the indi­vidual telephone companies are IM)metimes stumped by the ingenuity of tbecuatomers. The bulky C hicago directory has (or aome years IJtarted with an outfit called A Basement Waterproorer . of 30 N. Dear­born. By legally adopting this name, the company has outmaneuvered t he American Automobile AB­sociation and all other contestanla fo r first plnce. The AAA ia the initial entry in a large number of boo"".

A fair percentage of the first and finn l listings are namee fiB genuine as sterling 8ilver. Zznnr, Tbomas, cloues the Chicago directory wit.h the name he was born with. Yet the amiable telephone companies of the Bell System often regard it as a public service to p rint synthetic names, too - within reaaon. Com· petition (or the No.1 listing is 80 fie rce in 80me 10-cnlitiea that strict. growld rules have had to be ap­plied . When a subscriber in a Southern city de­manded top billing with lhe name of Aaanaron, his request Wll8 turned down because he could not pro­duce proof Lhnt be was entitled to more than two of those five a's.

Last place is Ie&& bitterly Cought for. Accordingly, in Los Angeles the telephone company is glad to ac­cept an extra quarter a month-charges for addi­tionallistinga range (rom twenty-five to fifty cents ­from a sa1esman who wants to be .ecorded both under his real name and ll8 Zzyzz, Ricardo. Most of t he &1I companies incline to be brond-minded about such harmJess eccentricities; they believe ardently in pleasing the subscriber. In the New York Manhattan directory the terminal listing is, 80 belp us, the Zyzzy Ztamp Ztudioz. Prezumably people buy ztampz from tbiz ztore.

Such characters seem to have a conviction that they are easier to locate. [n Detroit, for instance, a group of gay bachelors sharing an apartment. asked

-

to have their common telephone n umber e ntered in t.be imagina ry name of Zeke Zzzpt. Their idea, if it can be 80 dign ified, was that this would make t.hings simpler after a n evening date.

"Call me up, Toots," one of the young blades would say. " I ' m a cinch to find. Very last name in the book."

Whether t.be zany scheme works or not must be left. to speculat.ion. None of the telephone com­panies admit. liability for distort.ionB, omissionB, broken romancea or mistakes.

Yet directory executives from 8o8ton to San Francisco make accuracy their primary goal, and they swell wit.h pride at the records they achieve. Telephone books, they claim, are 99.91 per cent ac­curate despite the COuntlC88 opport.unit.ies fo r error. The directory managers are not wholly happy, even 80- possibly becaUllC of ilie screalll80f anguish whicb may arise when a ns .me is misspelled or an incorrect. address or number printed. They spend months training the girla who take service orden to beware the piUaUs in such names 88 Katherine Coffee (or Kathryn Korrey, Catharine Coughey or Kathrine Kauphie), A debrree of self-flagellation mn.rks the at-' ~itude '?( the Bell System men. While striving for the iIl1p0s8lble record of 100 per cent. t hey insist on counting mistakes which are pnlpably tbe fa ult of a carelC88 subscriber.

Next to accurate listings, the problem that cawes the most lost sleep among the telephone people in the la.gCflt. American cities is t.he size of their ISooks. It is convenience to the customer rather than print.­ing expei18C t.hat. concerns t.hem. Pew, if any, Bell executives can do more than guC88 at. the pe .... book cost or a directory. 80 numerous are the departments involved in its product.ion. The salaries of business­office clerks, technicianB and distributon must be charged against the total - quite apart from the printer's bill.

However, they estimate that the coet o f publishing and delivering a directory t.be size of a M anhat.tan book is approximately $1.50. The coet of providing the same directory to an out.-or-town lub8criber can run alm08t. as high as a dollar extra. The ex­peil8C8 o ( putting out. the huge volumes are hidden in Lhe subscribers' monthly billa, anyway, and few UlICrs are aware of t.hem.

The headache is bulk. Lee J ordan. in charge of directory operations for t he New York Telephone Company . has an exhibit in bis office to which he points with decorous horror. For some years· sepa­rate booloJ have bad to be published for the live boroughs of greater New York City: Mr. Jordan's SOOWPMK:e is a projection, based on scientific esti­mates, of the 1975 Manhattan directory alone. 1t will be more than five inches thick, as compared with IC88 1ha.n 1hree (Contintu:t.I Oil I'age 9 1)

S he h ultJs th e huge Manhattan hook , ",·Idc h, it iii pred ic t ...... I, ",.i11 be ncnrl y lwicea big by 19i5.

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inches for the current book, unless t he company finds some way of reducing it.

Tbe mechanical difficulties of print­ing and binding such a tome are not. in­luperable. The country's really big pre . ?3 could do the job. What worries Mr. Jordan a.nd his colleagues is the effect such a combinat.ion of tb.ickne88 and weight will bave o n the subscriber. Tbey have visions of 80me elderly Aunt M.ehitabel being unable to lift t.he book or, even worse, dropping it on ber foot. Perhaps it could be split - A to Land M to Z. The directories of London, England, are 80 divided. But that would add another volume to the al­ready too numerous New York City collcct.ion_ Mr. Jordan is not alone in his wocs. Chicago's directory baB 2139 pages, not including the separate sub­urban issues. Philadelphia's also is mammoth. .

The UBe of type smaller than the especially designed Bell Gothic. which now appears in almost a ll directories, would bring e mphatic protests. Mr . Jordan reminds himse.IJ mournfully of the statistical fact that the oldsters in the nation's populo.t.ion are increasing. Some opticians might also complo.in, as it is fa irly standard practice to use telephone-book t.ype in testa fo r read­ing vision. At one time consideration was given to t.he possibility of supply­ing a magnifying gla88 wit.h each book, and len.ses were actually designed. But the notion WaB abandoned becaUBe of the probability that the glasses would be mislaid in most. homes and almost certa.in1y stolen {rom public booths .

Thinner papers might provide a 80-­

lution, but their use might shorten tbe lives of books, which have, at best, a limited expectancy. Otherwise civi­lized people have a deplorable habit of tearing out pages at boot.hs and in hotel rooms instead of copying down the numbers. A staff of inspectors roams such busy centers as railroad and bus stat.ions to 800 if directory re­placements are necessary. At New York's Grand Cent.ral Terminal fresh books are required every forty-eight. hoW1l. And nothing much can be done to stop people from tearing pages out of the directoriee for WIC 8.8 confetti when a parade is staged fo r some re­turning hero. A record WaB chalked up o n Gertrude Ederle's t.riumphant a.r-­rival to New Yo rk aHer she swam the English Channel in 1926. The shredded pages of 5000 directories were show­ered on her at a cost, in th08C inexpen­sive days, of a couple of thousand dol­lars. The New York Telephone Com­pany, which had to supply new books, still shudder9 at the memory.

A household phraac in the Bell fam­ily is .. good overtones," which meall8 ihat the companies are keenly aware of the value of public relations. They like to make the customer happy, and t.he pert little cler ks in the businC88 offices are carefully educated in the art. When a new subscriber spells out. some lengthy handle, such as John Cholmondeley Peppercorn. the need for good overtonee is gtoot. Would he not be willing to appear as John C. Peppercorn, t.he clerk asks tactfuUy, or, bet.ter yet, os J . C. Peppercorn ? Usually t.h is a pproach wor ks. If the customer is adamnnt, though, t.he di­rectory compilers sigh and shoot. the whole works. A friendly voice will call Mr. Peppercorn before the next i86ue gocs to pre??, however, to aBk whether he baBn' t changed his mind.

Surnames, o n the ot.her hand , are never abbreviated. The directory ed i­tors could do nothing about a gentle­man who appeared in the 1951 Altoona , Pennsylvania, book 8B Wolfeschlegel­steinhau.senbergerdorff, Herbert B. They simply threw up their h.c ""1ds a nd printed this, the longest name on rec­ord. With his addrtE3 and number, it took up three linClf.

I n Waghington, D.C., and in other areas near Army and Navy· inswlla­LiolUl, the local companies have addi­tional difficulties in keeping listings to one line. This is because military per­sonnel, whether of land, sea or ai r , cling fondly to their titles. A marine general no longer active still goes in as Brig Gen USM C Ret. Too much com­p teseion might cause top-brass hackles to rise, so a vice-admiral is not just. an adm. He is identified with nautical precision as V Adm USN. A Staff Sgt USAF gets i ecognition, too, probably

Ap r il :!. 19."> 1

on the sound thcory that no more-im­portant rank exists in the Air Force. The Chesapeake a nd Potomac Tele­phone Company, which ser ves the na­tion's capital a nd most. o f Maryland, Virginia and West. Virginia, druw8 the line only at privates.

" You'll be at least a corporal before the new book is out," one of the "over­tones" girls tells them , a nd the cajol­ery baB always worked.

Add .. wocs are also likely to spill over onto two lines, and here again Wash­ington a nd its environs a.re among t he worst. offenders. C rowd ing by t he t.ype­setters helps. By leaving litt.le or no space between n umbers and names in add. eFE~ like 3318BuenaVistaTer a.nd 4522 LivngstnRd, thousands of tons of white paper can be saved. But it is hardly po8Bible to cut OldBlo.d nsbrg Rd Sil S pg (translat.ion: Old Bladensburg Road , Silver Spring, Maryland) very much more.

The C&PTeIC'o-the co m pa n y will accept checks 80 drawn, prov­ing t.hat it practices as well as preaches- has learned that there is such a thing as comp. _ring too much. A resident of Glen H ills, Maryland , protested not lo ng ago t hat his friends, reading h is abbreviated add. ess hastily were accusing h im of liv ing in Gin Hills. In the new dil"C(:tory tbe name was spelled out in full.

It must not. be supposed, fro m this incident, that the C&PTeICo bows meekly to prohibit.ionist acntiment; it merely wa n ts to give satisfactory ser v­ice. Near Laurel, Ma ryland , is a coun­try lane long k nown, for reasons lost. in history, as W hisky Bottom Road. O nly a score of telephone subscr ibers live there. Half of them found the name objectionable and wanted it changed to

No immediate, practical answer has yet boon found to the problem of grow­ing bulk. The directory exper ts strug­gle to ma~e each ~jst.ing. as brief . 8B lheir considerable mgenwty pernuta. Any name, a.ddN7 and .number which runs to two lines m the dIreCtory ca'wes t.hem acute pain. The cost of adding a second line to a listing in the Manhat­tan book is $2.65. In addition, extra lines add to the size of the book. In their: efforts to a void the two-line peril, the Bell oompaniee. aided by A.T.&T. , have elevated abbreviation to a ecience. Most bu.sineHaea and pro­feesions can be comptE Fed to phys, chirpdst, delct.aen, rei est or ch suey. F irst names become Wm, Chas, J aB, Edw, Goo and Thos, jf the customer is willing.

The Perfect Squelch

T H E young secretary WIl8 a hard worker and anI.ioua to

m.akegood, but ahe had a grouchy bo:J B8 whom nothing could please. For months, ahe .uffered in .Bence under his constant criticism. Then, as might be eJ:pected, she found herself another job. Her hoes ns:eived the news with in­credul.ity.

" \Vhy, young woman," he aaid, "your work is just begin­ning to show the results of months of careful training. I took a lot of

trouble with you. And now you 're leaving."

The boss paused, waiting for the girl to make some a pologetic remark. Hearing none. he w l.ked 8S though she couldn't poesibly succeed elsewhere.

"Remember that if you ever need a job," he concluded, .. you can always apply here."

" If I ever come back here," the girl replied gently, " I certainly will be in need of a job."

-(;RACE NO RCROSS.

,.,., .... ,~

anybody's request for an unpublished number, though reluctantly. Unlisted subscribers, for one thing, add to the volume of infonnation calls. Such a number is really private; it is not listed with Infonnation. Only in a grave emergency will an exchange ring it to ask whether the caller should be oon­nected.

As a warning to people who find a certain snobbish satisfaction in private numbers, directory executives tell the sad story of a young man we'll call Elbert Harrow, who lived in a Mid­western city. He insisted on an anony­mous telephone and forgot his number within hoUl'8 after the installation. To­ward evening, after asking some office associatcs to drop in at his house for cocktails, he wanted to notify his houseboy that t he,}' were coming. So he dialed Information.

"I'm Elbert Harrow," he explained.

95

• ml -o na

"M ISS nENSON!" " I want to call my home, but 1 can't remember the number."

Patuxent Drive. The other half stood fi rmly for tradition; t.hey had always dwelt on Whisky Bottom Road, they deelared loudly, and there they would live and die. The C&PTeICo extri­cated itself neally from this dilemma. [t olTered to list the subscriber's ad­dress either way. Let those who pre­ferred Patuxent Drive choose it., nnd t he rest could remain linked with the demon rum.

The justifiable desire of the tele­phone companies to cut down on two­line directory listings explains why postal-:I'.one numbers are not included. Whenever a new postmaster takes office in a city, he wanls to' know if 7,one numbers cannot be printed wit.h subscribers' addressefl. The answer is a lways the same. Adding the zone number would require three or fou r additional type spaces. I nstead , most oompanies publish a map of the posta l mnes in the Classified directory, or yellow pages, a long with a full page devoted to mailing rates and regula­lions. The sad truth anyway, as Bell executives are likely to point out, is that only a fraction of all mail is ad­dressed with the :I'.one number.

Things are difficult enough without mne numbers. A viLaI part of every directory system, though unseen by the telephone user, is t he infonnation 8Crvice. This i8 an essential adjunct. of all exchanges. small or huge. The day when a subscriber asked the operator to "get me Bill Joncs; I think he's down to the sawmill" is as extinct a8 the whalebone COl'8Ct a nd the mustache cup. Yet even now the contmst. be­tWeen the quasi-rural office and the metropolitan one is vivid.

Consider the office in Barbara l<~ritchie 's home town, Frederick , Maryla nd . Although it is relatively Small, its dilll equipment is as mode~n as any in the land . I t serves a n area III

8; radius of ten miles or more from the city limits. Two pretty girls take care of aU the information queries; new numbers, which are filed beside them in a rotary card index. nonnally reach them within an hour of the time a new phone is installed. Unlike metropolitan Customers, people in a small commu­nity have the habit of looking num­bel'B up in the directory before they ask Information . If too many of them get lazy, the Prederick office launches a gentle but firm Ie education campaign.

"That's in the book," Informat.ion will say sweetly. ,

I n the V8Bt cities like Philadelphl8.. Chica.go and New York, despite ener-

"Sor-ry," droned the girl. "That is a private number."

he " But I 'm Elbert Harrow," getic propaganda hy the telephone pleaded, "and it's my number." companics, requests for already-pub- " I am sorry, Rir; we are not aUowed lished numbers are in the majority. to give out the number." ManhattAn Island alone has five infor- All big cities have such inacceggible mation exchangcs; at each one some subscribers: there are probably more 90,000 queries a day are l'CC(!ived in of them in the Hollywood movie 001-automa tic rotation by long rows of ony than anywhere else. Furtive peel_ operators. The girls sit in glass-parti- diem used to ha wk lists of "private tioned booths, surrounded by borough numbers of the stam" a long Wilshire and suburban directories. C IQ8e at Bouleva rd on the way to Santa Monica hand is the printed daily addendum of or Brentwood Heights. Recently Miss 500 or so new numbers, which comcs to Joan Cmwford was asked about the the in formation ope rators about authenticity of these lisls. twenty-four hoUl'8 after the phoncs " I think that people did what I did have gone into service. and changed their numbers so fre-

More than 70 per centof the requests quenUy that they couldn't have been in Manhattan are for numbers which 8.ccumte." Miss Crawford replied. " I could have been found in the direc- have solved the whole problem, how­tory. An A.T.&T. official thinks the ever. I have 8. wonderful exchange unwieldy book is to blAme. He bla mes, service where efficient. opemtors take too, the discouragingly la rge number the calls and relay them to my seere­of people in New York who are named tary," Brown, Smit.h, Cohen, Jones or Levy. The telephone companies can do lit­It'B easier just to ask Informat.ion. tie about t.he inadvertent inclusion in The listener who plugs in on one the book of shady chamcters of either of the opemtors cannot help being sex. The names of m8.ny a bookmaker amazed 8.t their patience and good na- and fancy lady have appeared in ai­ture. They reach first for the current m08t every large directory-at least directory, and they never remind the tempomrily. But, detective work is customer t.hat he might. hAve saved ha rdly a proper pnrt of any communi. their time a nd his own by looking up catians sYRI-em. and the companies the number. One of the information cannot reflll!C or d iscontinue service un­girls was 8.sked recenUy whether, to- til there has been a conviction in the ward the end of a hard day, she did not courts. Meanwhile _ un less they have blow her top and snarl , .. It's in the been 80 naive 88 to admit t.heir real oc­book, youlug!" cupations to a telephone replcs~nta-

She looked scandali:l'.ed, then grinned. tive-Joe HOl'8Ctrack and M i88 O'Verne " I never do, of COUl"9C," she Mjd, .. but LRTorch are listed like anybody else. I have been tempted." The infonnation operator will give out.

Between the rows of operators roam their numbers, but not their profes­experienced supervisors who ca n con- sions. because Bhe hasn't. the fainlat neet their headphones to any of t.he idea what t.hey are. boards if the girls are baffled. They The Bell System informat.ion serv­must wrE!8tle with. among other things, ices are by no means limited to tele­people who do not speak English very phone queries. During World Wa r If well or who have pronounced foreign the New York Telephone Company accents, On~ d~~ a youthful operator leG-eived letters daily from servicemen appealed despturlllgly to her superior. in nearby C8.mp8 who were about to

"It Munds as if th.isl>8:i1:Y ~ant.8 t~e • visi t the city on leave and wanted the ~Iook ~nd Eye ~,ntal <:hmc, she ~ud telephone numbers of girls they bad III bewildemlent . I can tfind 8.nythlllg met. 80 they could make dates in ad­like that." . ,. . vance_ A Medical Corps major in a n

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The supervl80r s IIlterpretation was evacuation h08pitB.1 in France wrote prompt. " I t Play sound like Hook for a Manhattan book, explaining that. and Eye," . she conceded. ' : But what some of his young officers had become he wants IS the Guggenheim Dental acquainted with girls while in training Clinic." . . at St. Luke's H08pitB.1 and wanted to

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t . e lrectory-anbe-m °Mrma Ion ~mC88 was sent at once, and the major re- I 703 f . WD.M~.'o~ s,,"' Sy .... <~ •• 1 N T : is private num rs. any promment ported that it was 800n worn dog- I I .v>nple have valid reasons tor not wa nt- eared. r Rush funht r infotm:uion and Ie-II me I . -- be ' t.h book Th be d \\"he~ I can SC'C' and fry you r Cash Re-gis· I ing to me . ey can ,an A more poignant communication I Itr and .... dd ing Machine. I are, called at all hours of the day and was received by New York's fonner i I night by salesmen and eccentrics. The Mayor Impeilitteri lind forwarded to 51" t :

. ill I ' b : CLIP nits TO YOUR BUSINESS lmERII(AO telephone compames w comp y WIt the A.T.&T. It was written by a young Io ..... - .. - .. --... _ ....... _________ l

96

Cuban, whom we shall caJi Jua n Perez, after a visit to New York. His girl in Havana had asked him to bring back, 8S a present, a Manhattan directory. J uan had paid four dollars for the book and t hen had losl it. His lament con­tinued:

She don't believe me. You know the women! She thinks I forgot to fetch the direc­LOry. She don't believe I _pent $-4.00 do llal'll in a woman whim.

Oh who invented ,trill? Will you be 110 kind lUI to ItIl nding me a

phone direcwry? I am in lova. I don' t wanl 100 hcr. When you Wall 11 boy, ~ .. ro you Willi in trouble for a girl8nd perhnp' IKlmebody help you t hen. T o morrow I w~ help .-orne boy. We are only t he IIlrong IIIIlll: , lJut they are the fair lie • • \\'hat a .ex!

Will you? Thanb. million.

Let no one accUge the great A.T.&T. of being 8 heartless corpomtion. Juan received a free d irectory in short o rder. In paying four dollsra fo r his misla id copy he had been taken by city slick­ers, however. The Bell System has price lists of directories p~blished in the United States, Canada, Algeria, the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, the Bel-

fian Congo and Rhodesia -as well as nd.ia, Gennany, Luxembourg, Liech­

tenstein, Norway, Mexico and France. Tom as he WWl by love, Senor Perez should still have obtained a Manhattan book (or the current price of two dol­lars. Any telephone user can get in­structions for procuring any out-of­town or foreign book qy calling his lo­cal business office. H the people there don't know the price, they will q uickly find out.

I nternational telephony has obvi­ously added to the problemsof A.T.&T. and its affiliates. Seventy-five yeal"8 ago their lives were simple. The fil"8t directories were publiahed in 1878 in New Haven and New York, in 80 far as diligent I ESEarch has revealed. They were of one page each and were actu­aUy c1a88ified books, although the term had not yet been deviged. Subscribers were listed under such headings as Physicians, Dentists, Stores, Factories, Stables and Residencetl. I n the fil"8t Philadelphia directory, residential tele­phones were described as "8QCial." No numbel"8 or add.les~ were given, for t he good reason t hat they were not needed.

These preh.istoric directories, now carefully pIEeerved, are interesting for their omi8sions. Yale University does not appear on the or iginal New Haven list, doubtless because the conserva­tive E lis could not believe that the tele phone was here to stay. Only a few of the early New York subscribers are familiar. The Bradstreet Company, 249 Broadway, was among lhe pio­neers. So waa D. Appleton & Com­pany, publishers. Hotels with tele-

• phone 8Er vice way back then included the Wind80r, the Albermarle and the now-doomed Brevoor t. Le Boutillier & Brotl. was in the directory -today it is Best & Co. -and 80 was James M cCreery & Co. But Drexel, Morgan & Company, of which the elder J. P. M organ had become a partner seven years before, had not yet accepted the new means of communication.

I n a Chicago directory printed at about the same time, t he Adams Ex­preB8 Company is one of the few famil­iar names. But Chicago had a separate cia . ified list even in those first years. Under BASEBALL SUPPLIES appears A.G. Spaulding & Brothers-it was 80 spelled then-and under REAPERS, C. H . & L. McCormick.

T hen, as today, telephone books carried instructions for the proper use of the instruments. The Chicago com­pany directed sut Bcribers;

T il E S ,\TU HlH " t: Vt: N I NG I'OST

When you are called from the Centml Office, alll!lwer by ringin, your bell the 8B1DC

number of limet! u your call. i.e., if your caU ill three. anawer three; then turn the .witch to the right and uae your telephone. Speak dearly and dillLinctly, wit h your lips ,eolly TOUCHING the telephone.

I nstructions for use are 1€88 involved today, but they are still quite specific. The summer, 1953, directory for Cas­cade, Montana, I.ists only 182 names, but a word of warlling inside the cover indicates that men are still men in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains:

Profane Or ob&ccne langUllge over the com­pany', wirea ill prohibiUld . ... • 'ailure to ob­BeNe t h" will ooOlltitule C8W1e for dilloon lin­uin, Bervioe.

This admonition U8ed to be standard in practically all directories in the days before dial exchanges. when, sad to re­late, rough language was sometime8 directed at the poor operator. If any profanity is indulged in by members of the telephone family themselves - and the possibility is most unlikely - it doesn't come from the operators. It might come, though, from the lips of the thousands of harried specialists who compile, print, proofread and dis­tribute the 60,000,000 a nd more books each year.

Rather surprisingly, there are few major mechanical problems involved even in printing the very large vol­umes, 80 great have been the advances in the publishing ind ustry in the past fifty years.

.. Getting out director ies is pick-and­shovel work," accoPding to N. J. Van­derKloot, vice-president of the sprawl­ing R. R. OonnelJey & Sons Company on the 80uth side of Chicago. His com­pany prints a total of 1340 different directories for the ~11 and independent companies, in Chicago and at a second pla nt in Crawfordsville, I ndiana. They include the directories for Chicago,

Detroit. Cleveland, St. Louis and Den­ver, 88 well as for hundreds of other communities.

The jobs may be in the pick-a nd ­shovel daBS, yet only nine of the coun­try's print shops are prepared to han­dle a ny large number of them. Ap­proximately thirty more printers take on, in the main, leMEr directories in their own localities. Costly presSES and folding machines are required for telephone-book work, and the printer's problem is to find work for this equip­ment between major asaignment:a.

'l'he two biggest directory printers are Donnelley and the Jersey City Printing Company, in New Jersey. Their tasks, and those of the telephone companies, would be a lot easier if peo­ple didn' t get married or divorced, move or die. They would be simplicity itself if there were only a few new 'lUb­scribers. The intricate process by which a subscriber's name makes its way into the book starts when he a ppears at a business office or calls it. His name, ad­dlO? and occupation are carefully set down, in printed letters instead of script, to minimize miata.kes.

I n all the big-city offices, a battery of machines transmits to the printer t he new names a nd numbers, the changes and the cancellations of service. These are set into Bell Gothic type, labori­ously and repeatedly proofread by both the printer and the telephone company. The re8ulting daily addenda a re rushed by truck or train in order to reach the informa t ion girls early in the morning. Once a month, usually, a ll the changes are worked into a bound reprint for the use of the information exchanges, and after several months and additional checking and proofread­ing, this be:lOmes the new directory for the public.

The na tiona l bill fo r telephone books comes to more tM.n $40,000,000 an nu-

•

Ted Williams

Speaks ·

His Mind

T he most DlItslX)ken man in sporlS is ~ing to speak his picce in the Post. Starting ncxt week,

Ted Williams reveals his plans ror the ruture­plans that will surpriso. millions. I-Ie tel1.s what

he thinks about loday's baseball stars and managers. I-Ie names the greatest shortstop

he ever saw, the best righl.handed power hitter, and "the greatcst pit cher or my time."

For good measure, he tells you what he thinks or night baseball, bl eacher crowds-and sports writers!

You can begin this rrank and lively reature ..

In Next Week's Post

April 3, 19:;.1

ally. Most companies print in their directories a swtement decla ring that they are not liable for errors. and they have generally been upheld in the courts, on t.he ground that fimmcinl loss has not been proved. Litigation has been freq uent, however. Typica l was the case of a Delawa re dentist who brought suit because he was incor .. rectly listed. The court ruled that the mistake was not mal.icious, and a ll he received was a rebate on his bill. In t his and in other cases, the telephone companies have been fou nd innocent of any nasty or wicked intent. But the management fee ls deeply grieved by such mistakes and will go to any rea­sonable lengths to rectify them. If a name has been left out, a ll the sub­scriber has to do is furnish a list of na mes, and the company will mail post cards calling attention to the fact. Or, if the subscriber prefers, the phone company will give him the post cards to mail himseU.

The final step in the directory proc· ess is, of course, delivering the new books. I n a large city, distribution may take as long as three weeks; only a few days are needed fo r small communities. R ural areas CUll present diflicun.ies; it is not a lways easy to find delivery men who know where the farm subscr ibers are located. One company faced with this problem engaged several R .F.D. carriers to do tbe job in their off hours. One of them held out for a higher price, 80 the company put the books in the mail. T he chagrined route man had to do the job for noth ing.

At the same t ime the new telephone books are distributed, t he old ones are collected. The chief aim is to get ob-8OIel.e volumes out of use, thereby avoiding wrong numbers a nd an ad­ditional load on Information. During t he acute paper shortage of World War II, the o ld d irectories brought in pleasant sums when they were sold to scrap dealers and otbers. They are still often worth selling. Not long ago sev­eral thousand thick Manhattan books were shipped to a Central American banana firm, which U8ed them to bul­letproof its payroll trucks.

T he out-or-date d irectories are gath­ered up as quickly as poBSible a nd quickly got rid o r- 80metimes too quickly. For customers occasionally use telephone books WI repositories for money or valuable papers. Among the articles left in old directories ha ve been wedding certificates, stamp collection8, wa r bonds-and cash.

A New Engla nd storekeeper once tucked h is Saturday receipts of $1500 into a book, which was carried 01T on Monday, berore he had time to extract his money. The telephone com· pany told him he was welcome to examine the 100,000 volumes waiting to be carted away. He enlisted t he aid of h is wife, his sister, his brother­in-law and two nephews. They found the $1500 at the end of three days and 75,000 bookB.

On another occasion a girl answering a ca.J1 in a teJephone-rompany busillC8B office heard a frantic male voice. " I wrote the combination of my saJe on Page 273 of my directory," he a lmost howled , "and your people took it away while r was out."

Here, if ever, was a case for good overtones. The young lady made a check and found that almotlt 250,000 outworn books had been accumulated. But she bye to the emergencl, and ca.Jled the subscriber back. 'W hy don 't you have the 88fe -combination changed?" she IlUggesled.

He had not thought of that, and he had it done. Til V- t:~ U